Gandhara
Gandhara was an ancient Indo-Aryan civilisation in present-day northwestern Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan. The core of the region of Gandhara was the Peshawar and Swat valleys, extending up to Kabul and Bagram in the west and the Pothohar Plateau in the east. However, the cultural influence of Greater Gandhara extended as far as the Bamyan valley in the west and the Karakoram range in the northeast. The region was a central location for the spread of Buddhism to Central and East Asia, with many Chinese Buddhist pilgrims visiting the region.
Between the third century BCE and third century CE, Gāndhārī, a Middle Indo-Aryan language written in the Kharosthi script and linked with the modern Dardic language family, acted as the lingua franca of the region, and through Buddhism, the language spread as far as China based on Gandhāran Buddhist texts. Famed for its unique Gandharan style of art, the region attained its height from the 1st century to the 5th century CE under the Kushan Empire, which had their twin capitals at Kapiśi and Puruṣapura, ushering the period known as Pax Kushana.
The history of Gandhara originates with the archaeological Gandhara grave culture, characterised by a distinctive burial practice, and Gandhara's mentions in the Vedic period literature. According to post-Vedic legends of the Mahabharata, Gandhara played a role in the Kurukshetra War. By the 6th century BCE Gandhara gained recognition as one of the sixteen Mahajanapadas within South Asia. King Pukkusāti governed the region either before or after its conquest in the late 6th century BCE by the Achaemenid Empire of Persia. During its invasion by Alexander the Great in 327–326 BCE, the region was split into two factions with Taxiles, the king of Taxila, allying with Alexander, while the Western Gandharan tribes, exemplified by the Aśvaka around the Swat valley, resisted.
Following the disintegration of Alexander's Macedonian Empire, Gandhara became part of the Maurya Empire. The founder of the dynasty, Chandragupta Maurya, according to legends about his youth, had received an education in Taxila under Chanakya and later assumed control with his support. Subsequently, Gandhara was successively annexed by the Indo-Greeks, Indo-Scythians, and Indo-Parthians though a regional Gandharan kingdom, known as the Apracharajas, retained governance during this period until the ascent of the Kushan Empire. The zenith of Gandhara's cultural and political influence transpired during Kushan rule, later it flourished under Gupta Empire before succumbing to devastation during the Hunnic Invasions. However, the region experienced a resurgence under the Turk Shahis and Hindu Shahis.
Etymology
Gandhara was known in Sanskrit as Gandhāraḥ and in Avestan as 'Vaēkərəta. In Old Persian, Gandhara was known as Gadāra. In Chinese, Gandhara is known as Jiāntuóluó, with the Middle Chinese pronunciation reconstructed as kɨɐndala. One state of the region named Jìbīn is recorded in the Book of Han.One proposed origin of the name is from the Sanskrit word ', meaning "perfume" and "referring to the spices and aromatic herbs which they traded and with which they anointed themselves". The Gandhari people are a tribe mentioned in the Rigveda, the Atharvaveda, and later Vedic texts. This origin is also supported by the word Gandhara meaning “fragrance bringer” in the Pashayi language. A Persian form of the name, Gandara, mentioned in the Behistun inscription of Emperor Darius I, was translated as Paruparaesanna in Babylonian and Elamite in the same inscription. In Greek, Gandhara was known as Paropamisadae.'''
Geography
The geographical location of Gandhara has undergone much alteration throughout history, with the general understanding being the region situating between Pothohar in contemporary Punjab, the Swat valley, and the Khyber Pass also extending along the Kabul River. The prominent urban centres within this geographical scope were Taxila and Pushkalavati. According to a specific Jataka, Gandhara's territorial extent at a certain period encompassed the region of Kashmir. The Eastern border of Gandhara has been proposed to be the Jhelum River based on arachaeological Gandharan art discoveries however further evidence is needed to support this, though during the rule of Alexander the Great the kingdom of Taxila stretched to the Hydaspes.The term Greater Gandhara describes the cultural and linguistic extent of Gandhara and its language, Gandhari. In later historical contexts, Greater Gandhara encompassed the territories of Jibin and Oddiyana which had splintered from Gandhara proper and also extended into parts of Bactria and the Tarim Basin. Oddiyana was situated in the vicinity of the Swat valley, while Jibin corresponded to the region of Kapisa, south of the Hindu Kush. However during the 5th and 6th centuries CE, Jibin was often considered synonymous with Gandhara.
The Udichya region was another region mentioned in ancient texts and is noted by Pāṇini as comprising both the regions of Vahika and Gandhara.
History
Gandhāra grave culture
Gandhara's first recorded culture was the Grave Culture that emerged and lasted until 800 BCE, and named for their distinct funerary practices. It was found along the Middle Swat River course, even though earlier research considered it to be expanded to the Valleys of Dir, Kunar, Chitral, and Peshawar. It has been regarded as a token of the Indo-Aryan migrations but has also been explained by local cultural continuity. Backwards projections, based on ancient DNA analyses, suggest ancestors of Swat culture people mixed with a population coming from Inner Asia Mountain Corridor, which carried Steppe ancestry, sometime between 1900 and 1500 BCE.Vedic Gandhāra
According to Rigvedic tradition, Yayati was the progenitor of the prominent Udichya and had numerous sons, including Anu, Puru, and Druhyu. The lineage of Anu gave rise to the Madra, Kekaya, Sivi and Uśīnara kingdoms, while the Druhyu tribe has been associated with the Gandhara kingdom.The first mention of the Gandhārīs is attested once in the Rigveda| as a tribe that has sheep with good wool. In the Atharvaveda|, the Gandhārīs are mentioned alongside the Mūjavants, the Āṅgeyas and the Māgadhīs in a hymn asking fever to leave the body of the sick man and instead go those aforementioned tribes. The tribes listed were the furthermost border tribes known to those in Madhyadesha|, the Āṅgeyas and Māgadhīs in the east, and the Mūjavants and Gandhārīs in the north. The Gandhara tribe, after which it is named, is attested in the Rigveda, while the region is mentioned in the Zoroastrian Avesta as Vaēkərəta, the seventh most beautiful place on earth created by Ahura Mazda.
The Gāndhārī king Nagnajit and his son Svarajit are mentioned in the s, according to which they received Brahmanic consecration, but their family's attitude towards ritual is mentioned negatively, with the royal family of Gandhāra during this period following non-Brahmanical religious traditions. According to the Jain Uttaradhyayana|, Nagnajit, or Naggaji, was a prominent king who had adopted Jainism and was comparable to Dvimukha of Pāñcāla, Nimi of Videha, Karakaṇḍu of Kaliṅga, and Bhīma of Vidarbha; Buddhist sources instead claim that he had achieved Pratyekabuddhayāna|.
By the later Vedic period, the situation had changed, and the Gāndhārī capital of Takṣaśila had become an important centre of knowledge where the men of went to learn the three Vedas and the eighteen branches of knowledge, with the recording that s went north to study. According to the Shatapatha Brahmana| and the, the famous Vedic philosopher Uddālaka Āruṇi was among the famous students of Takṣaśila, and the claims that his son Śvetaketu also studied there. In the Chandogya Upanishad|, Uddālaka Āruṇi himself favourably referred to Gāndhārī education to the Vaideha king Janaka. During the 6th century BCE, Gandhāra was an important imperial power in north-west Iron Age South Asia, with the valley of Kaśmīra being part of the kingdom. Due to this important position, Buddhist texts listed the Gandhāra kingdom as one of the sixteen s of Iron Age South Asia. It was the home of Gandhari, the princess and her brother Shakuni the king of Gandhara Kingdom.
Pukkusāti and Achaemenid Gandhāra
During the 6th or 5th century BCE, Gandhara was governed under the reign of King Pukkusāti. There are no historical facts known for certain about Pukkusāti, and all theories about his reign are speculative relying on later Buddhist sources. It is debated whether he ruled before or after the Achaemenid conquest of the Indus Valley, and is unknown what kind of relationship he historically had with the Persian Achaemenid rulers. According to Buddhist accounts written centuries later, he had forged diplomatic ties with Magadha and achieved victories over neighbouring kingdoms such as that of the realm of Avanti. Pukkusāti's kingdom was described as being 100 Yojanas in width, approximately 500 to 800 miles wide, with his capital at Taxila in modern day Punjab as stated in early Jatakas.It is noted by R. C. Majumdar that Pukkusāti would have been contemporary to the Achamenid king Cyrus the Great and according to the scholar Buddha Prakash, Pukkusāti might have acted as a bulwark against the expansion of the Persian Achaemenid Empire into Gandhara. This hypothesis posits that the army which Nearchus claimed Cyrus had lost in Gedrosia had been defeated by Pukkusāti's Gāndhārī kingdom. Therefore, following Prakash's position, the Achaemenids would have been able to conquer Gandhāra only after a period of decline after the reign of Pukkusāti, combined with the growth of Achaemenid power under the kings Cambyses II and Darius I. However, the presence of Gandhāra among the list of Achaemenid provinces in Darius's Behistun Inscription confirms that his empire had inherited this region from Cyrus. Assuming that Pukkusāti lived during the 6th century BCE, is unknown whether he remained in power after the Achaemenid conquest as a Persian vassal or if he was replaced by a Persian satrap, although Buddhist sources claim that he renounced his throne and became a monk after becoming a disciple of the Buddha. The annexation under Cyrus was limited to the Western sphere of Gandhāra as only during the reign of Darius the Great did the region between the Indus River and the Jhelum River become annexed.
However, with alternative chronologies which date the Buddha's lifetime as much as a century later, it is alternatively possible that Pukkusāti in fact lived as much as a century after the Achaemenid conquest. Among scholars who favour the latter chronology, it remains an open question for debate, what kind of relationship Pukkusāti historically had with the Persian Achaemenid rulers. Possible theories are: he "may belong to a period when the Achaemenids had already lost their hold over Indian provinces," or he may have been holding power in eastern parts of Gandhara such as Taxila, or may have been serving as a vassal of the Achaemenids but with autonomy to conduct warfare and diplomacy with independent Indian states, similar to the "active and often independent role the western satraps had in Greek politics". Thus it is considered that he may have been an important intermediary for cultural influence between Ancient Persia and India.
Megasthenes Indica, states that the Achaemenids never conquered India and had only approached its borders after battling with the Massagetae, it further states that the Persians summoned mercenaries specifically from the Oxydrakai tribe, who were previously known to have resisted the incursions of Alexander the Great, but they never entered their armies into the region of Gandhara. File:Athens coin discovered in Pushkalavati.jpg|thumb|Athens coin discovered in Pushkalavati. This coin is the earliest known example of its type to be found so far east. Such coins were circulating in the area as currency, at least as far as the Indus, during the reign of the Achaemenids. |left
During the reign of Xerxes I, Gandharan troops were noted by Herodotus to have taken part in the Second Persian invasion of Greece and were described as clothed similar to that of the Bactrians. Herodotus states that during the battle they were led by the Achamenid general Artyphius.
Under Persian rule, a system of centralised administration, with a bureaucratic system, was introduced into the Indus Valley for the first time. Provinces or "satrapy" were established with provincial capitals. The Gandhara satrapy, established 518 BCE with its capital at Pushkalavati. It was also during the Achaemenid Empire rule of Gandhara that the Kharosthi script, the script of Gandhari prakrit, was born through the Aramaic alphabet.